


Life is like a Hurricane

by TCAlert



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Established Relationship, M/M, Not Cap Friendly, Steve Bashing, Team Iron Man, hurricane forecaster au, nhc au, vent fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-01
Updated: 2019-08-01
Packaged: 2020-07-28 13:49:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20065060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TCAlert/pseuds/TCAlert
Summary: The Avengers work at the National Hurricane Center. Everything was fine, until Hurricane Amora began to rapidly intensify…[//Crack Hurricane Forecaster AU you never knew you needed//]





	Life is like a Hurricane

“With all due respect Forecaster Rogers, you are inconceivably incorrect.”

Tony had just returned from a three day trip to Japan in order to speak with the forecasters at the JMA.

He had promised Loki that he wouldn’t stress about his job while there, that he would fully enjoy the trip. And it almost worked.

Fury had allowed him to take one associate with him on the trip. As soon as the words left the director’s mouth, Tony decided that he would bring his intern, Peter. The kid was obviously excited about the trip, being only a college student.

It had all gone well. The conferences were a tiresome affair, yet very interesting to both NHC workers. They spent a day exploring Tokyo, and Tony bought Loki a silk kimono, a shade of emerald green that would make his eyes pop and his pale skin look divine. To be honest, imagining his husband wearing (not to mention taking off) the gift was probably the highlight of the trip.

On the flight home, Peter managed to sit next to a half-asleep Tony, even though the seat on his plane ticket was four rows up. “Mr. Stark, have you heard about Hurricane Amora? It looks like it is beginning to intensify.”

Tony groaned. “No, kid, I haven’t,” he muttered. “When the meeting with JMA ended, I promised my husband that I wouldn’t look at anymore work-related things until I got back home.” The annoyance was visible through his tired expression. Catching the unspoken do not disturb, Peter went back to his laptop.

Just as Tony managed to fall back asleep, he was jerked awake by Peter, whose face was a myriad of anger and excitement. “Mr. Stark, do you have any idea why Chief decided to leave the storm at a category 2? Evidence clearly supports that…”

Tony was on the hinge of zoning out entirely, but the word “Chief” combined with Peter’s angrily-shocked tone brought him back to the more productive side of consciousness. He rubbed his eyes and sat up straight (gay? bi? Nothing Tony did was straight). Carefully reading over the forecast discussion, he thought to himself, this is going to be a long night.

When the pair finally landed, they quickly packed their things into a car - well, as quickly as the painfully slow customs procedures would allow for. Tony rushed Peter back to his apartment, probably breaking more than a few traffic laws, before promptly reversing his rental vehicle and driving straight to his office. The white sedan barely squeezed through the traffic, but Tony had to have broken some record as he raced to the NHC within half an hour.

  
He burst through the doors, only to find an empty reception desk. Disregarding the typical sign-in procedures and his lack of badge, he barreled down the hall into the Hurricane Specialist Unit’s office. Tony spent more time there than he did at his own home on some days. It was a large space, with many gadgets which were all balanced out by an equally impressive collection of plants. Large computer screens covered a wall. Staring at them broodingly was none other than Steven Grant Rogers. That bastard.

He waited a few moments, grudging respect for his superior outweighing his desire to barge in and immediately curse out the absolute fool standing before him. Steve caught his reflection in one of the images and slowly turned around. “Stark,” he began, before Tony interrupted him.

“Rogers,” he growled. “My intern informed me of a rather… unique decision you made with the recent forecast for Hurricane Amora. And with all due respect Forecaster Rogers, you are inconceivably incorrect.”

Tony was seething. Was Rogers stupid? Classifying the upcoming storm so low was bound to end in widespread disaster.

“Tony, I’ve been in this industry for just as long as you have,” the Senior Forecaster started, speaking in a manner that made clear he was under the impression that Tony was a lost kid who’d wandered into the HSU by accident. “We went to the same school, and received nearly identical education. You should know that without proper observation, we cannot just upgrade a storm to any intensity. And as of now, we are still waiting for a recon flight.”

Steve spoke in a calm voice, which certainly did not help Tony’s internal rage. He was stubborn, and sometimes decided to ignore data in favor for old fashioned methods. Evidently, this was one of those times.

Steve stared at him for a bit longer, before returning his attention back to the recon plots. Tony marched over to his desk. A single cord connected the servers for his site to the computer, and to the whole world. He pulled the plug.

The screens Rogers happened to be studying so intensely went black. Spinning on his heel with agility his bulky build betrayed, Steve looked up and glared at Tony. Grumbling, he went to his desk and began to read over some papers. At the same time, Bruce walked in with Clint in tow, each holding two cups of coffee.

“Hey, Tony,” Bruce said quietly. He knew what was about to go down, and handed Tony his cup. “You look like a mess.”

Tony took a long sip of the bitter, black liquid, surveying the forecasters before him over the rim of the cup. “Bruce, Clinton. How nice to see you. I suppose both of you have been sitting on your asses while the old fool runs amuck with our agency’s credibility?” Tony gestured to Steve with a flourish. They stared at him in exasperation. Tony wondered which one would speak up first.

“Well if he’s an old fool, so are you,” Barton said dryly. “And don’t call me Clinton, you dick. By the way, how was your vacation to Japan?”

“We have been working on TCR’s and TWO’s. Romanoff and Rogers have been taking care of most advisories,” Bruce filled in helpfully. Out of all the forecasters who worked at the Center, Banner was by far his favorite. They had teamed up on a few complex issues before, and even fathered a couple of papers together.

“Is Romanoff here? Where is she?” Tony was on a caffeine related high and ideas rushed through his cluttered mind. Visions of confrontations with Steve, his inevitable victory. None of his losses. He quickly dismissed the thoughts as biased, except for the one that sounded suspiciously like Loki. After all, wasn’t that what husbands were for, cheering you on through your toughest battles? Even if they were imaginary.

“She went to the reception desk. Apparently someone broke in,” Bruce said as Clint walked away. Good old Bruce. Sticking around to answer the real questions, unlike some rogue forecasters who didn’t bother picking sides for the upcoming war. Maybe Tony would spare Barton when he’d earned his title as victor, when Amora came crashing into the Atlantic Coast.

Wait, he backtracked, pausing to let Banner’s words sink in. Aw, shit. I’m the break in. Eh, he’d be fine, once Romanoff looked at the security footage and saw his sleep-deprived ass zooming through the halls.

“Is that other coffee for Steve?” Bruce nodded in confirmation and Tony thanked him as he snatched the sweet elixr out of his hand. Scalding hot liquid dripped upon his arms, but Tony ignored it, swiftly walking towards the front desk. Romanoff was helping the janitors to clean up the mess he had made of the door.

“Sorry Nat, that was all me. Steve was being an imbecile, nothing new there. So, how’re you doing?”

“Tony…” Natasha began, but was stopped short.

“No,” he snapped, the one syllabal sounding like the crack of a whip. “I don’t want to hear your goddamn excuses. I want to know exactly why you let Steve fucking Rogers underdo the intensity of Amora so much. I know y…” Tony went off, letting his frustrated rage consume him.

This time it was Romanoff’s turn to interrupt. “Before you begin to project your anger on me, why don’t you go talk to him yourself?” she questioned coldly. “Why’d you bother coming to me? We all have our parts to play.” The truth was, Tony didn’t know. Nat wasn’t the one who often took sides. She was a no-nonsense forecaster who often ended up going with whatever authority forced her to in certain cases. She was excellent at analyzing steering currents and creating tracks, something that she had been teaching Peter over the last few weeks. It wasn’t fair to expect her to keep Rogers in line when he was technically her boss.

After muttering a sheepish apology, Tony strode back to the HSU office, with Forecaster Romanoff hot on his heels. Bruce had clearly helped get the systems back online. Steve was so inept at technology, it was a wonder that he managed to get past high school, let alone graduate FSU and get a high position in a tech-based career.

“Hey Rogers, you miss me?”

With a stern glare of patented Steve Rogers Disapproval, the man in question faced Tony. “You’ve been gone for ten minutes, Tony. And at the NHC for twenty. In that time, you took my recon board down, assaulted the front door, and stole my coffee. So no, I did not miss you.”

And with that, a dam burst within Tony that he couldn’t care less about keeping in place. “Woah, woah, woah, Mr. Technologically Illiterate,” he mocked, “that is in no away your recon board. Tell me, which aspects of it did you design? I did all of that. Every single last painstaking line of code. That thing exists by my hand, not yours, not anyone else’s here.”

Oh, Tony was mad. Seething, irate, outraged, even. “I was gone for three days, Steve, just three. But somehow, someway not even the gods know, you managed to make the entire agency look like complete and utter fools in that time. I’ve gotta say, I am impressed. How stubborn must one be to completely IGNORE ninety-nine percent of the given information, only because they - you - believe that reconnaissance missions are more important?”

“There are peoples LIVES at stake here, Steve. You served in what branch? PETA? Because you seem to be concerned more about your status and paychecks than about the people who actually need the information.”  
Bruce approached him from behind. Tony whipped around, still enraged, “Don’t you dare try to calm me down, Brucie-bear. Mr. Rogers over here had this coming. And another thing,” he started, off on another tangent, “Where were you when this happened? When I’m here, you’re always so eager to put your two cents into every damn forecast. What happened, man? Are you scared that Chief will fire you without me here to protect you?”

“Tony, it’s not like that at all. Ask anyone of us, we knew what was going on. We tried to tell him he was wrong, but he didn’t listen!” Bruce sounded close to tears, the hurt expression marring his face physically slapping the infuriated forecaster, and immediately Tony recoiled.

“Look, the latest loop is up. Why don’t we all go see? I’ll play it on the largest screen.” Bruce ran over to Tony’s desk and turned on the projector. It was a sandwich loop, one of Tony’s favorites.

Steve was silent. Almost too quiet. Still, Tony disregarded the odd nonvocal reaction and used it as an opportunity to further his argument. “Alright Chief, I know back in your day y’all didn’t have all this new fangled technology. But this isn’t your day. It’s mine, this is the age where we let technology improve our lives. See this machine here?” he pointed with fake astonishment. “It’s called a projector. It projects an image onto a screen! But you know what’s even better? This is a satellite image. Guess what it shows? Amora!”

“Tony, that is enough. The storm has made you stressed and your behavior is childish. Go home.” Steve finally spoke. “I realize that that is a satellite image, and respect your opinions about them. But I have my own, and they are what I went with.” He spoke in a boring monologue. Same old, same old.

“Yeah well, fuck that. Your opinion is wrong. Full stop, no questions asked.” Was Rogers for real? Endangering countless lives based on his uneducated opinions? How the fuck had this guy gotten promoted instead of him?

“This satellite loop is displaying nearly everything that the dense cabbage inside your skull couldn’t comprehend. Let’s list it out. See that in the center? It’s an eye. A well developed eye, approximately 20-30 miles wide. Even without the sun above us, you could still see a well developed stadium effect. Of course, you wouldn’t know what that is, considering that you still have a flip phone.”

Tony turned again to his favorite colleague, this time far more gentle and with a slight smile on his face. “Bruce, switch channels to Dvorak.”

“Got it,” Bruce quickly complied.

“Now here’s something interesting. If I ever dared to show this to you in the past, you would quickly dismiss it as a Russian conspiracy. Who knows why you decided to pursue this field, you clearly would’ve made a great politician. Bland, boring and dull, with a nice condescending holier-than-thou attitude.”

“But your questionable career choices aside, this little gimmick is called the Dvorak Technique and is a proven method of diagnosing the intensity of a TC.” Tony leaned forward and let his eyes widen as he adopted the tone of a kindergarten teacher admonishing their students. “You know why the pretty colors on the screen went away? Because this has a specific infrared channel. Infrared, believe it or not is a type of light; I’ve gotta clarify since I’m not sure what those textbooks of yours said about new scanning technology. Based on the cloud pattern displayed here, and for the last few hours, I would rate it at a T-6.5, a 145 MPH Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. Definitely not a cat 2.”

“I don’t think you understand how many lives you’ve put at stake Steve. I don’t think you know what you’re doing at all.” Tony concluded his rant - for now.

Steve was growing impatient. “Are you done yet?” he said, “I’d like to go home for the night. And besides, people were warned that the storm could be stronger than expected. I made sure of that.”

Nat finally spoke up. “No, actually, you did not, Mr. Rogers. That was entirely me. While you were ignoring basic science, I was ensuring that a proper disclaimer was included in each advisory package, while also fine tuning all the tracks. You did absolutely nothing with the genesis of this storm. That was Clint. He handled the models exceptionally well.”

Bruce smiled sheepishly. “I may have done something as well. There have been exactly 8 advisories in which Steve over here has underestimated the intensity. Read the first letter of each, boss.”

Steve got up immediately, his eyes wide. He went to his cabinet and pulled out a printed copy of each forecast discussion. “It spells out… e-v-a-c-u-a-t-e.” The Senior Forecaster stared incredulously. “Have you all been working against me? I thought we were a team here.”

Tony spoke up. “So did I. Then you left it. You may have under-estimated the storm’s intensity, but don’t accidentally under-estimate your own ego. Basic things here, Dvorak and satellite imagery. Ignored. At this point it isn’t even necessary to view other things! You can estimate the strength of the storm quite well just based on satellite presentation. Yet you entirely botched the rapid intensification forecast, and refused to admit that your forecast was wrong. This storm makes landfall TOMORROW, and if Forecasters Romanoff and Banner hadn’t worked overtime for this, millions more people would be in danger.”

Clint looked up from his phone. “Tony, I think it’s time to leave. Not even god knows when the last time you slept was. You’re gonna be here a lot more often, if things pan out in our favor.”

Tony, Bruce and Nat look at him suspiciously, before agreeing. Steve looked weary and tired. On his way out of the door, Tony turned around and gave Steve the middle finger, before prancing away. Steve defeatedly buried his head into his arms. 

**Author's Note:**

> This was a fleeting midnight thought I made the mistake of sharing with frost_belle. Now you get a multi-chapter fic of Steve-bashing and forecaster jargon, because why tf not. Its 4 am and I do what I want.


End file.
